Talk:1456: On the Moon

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 17:51, 5 December 2014 by 141.101.98.181 (talk)
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Transcript

I don't see why the transcript is incomplete, it looks pretty complete and all there to me... Official.xian (talk) 14:45, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Agreed, removed incomplete tag. --Pudder (talk) 14:49, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

I wondered if the cartoon is about sex discrimination. After all, when people went to the moon, nobody even considered (as far as I know) letting a woman go on an Apollo flight. Megan might be saying "Land a man on the moon?" Or she might be tired of Cueball saying this and be obliquely suggesting NASA send him there on a one-way trip! Gade (talk) 15:25, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

No, that only means that you are blinded by the alienation caused by the noxious media sites you visit. This strip is clearly about doing a 'real' manned moonlanding instead of that fake hollywood footage from 1969 that doesn't look anything like the photos taken last year from the chinese lander. --Loon (talk) 18:49, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Is there a reference for the claim "Unmanned hardened pre-cooled robotic probes either got crushed or fried before landing, or survived only a couple of hours at most."? Djbrasier (talk) 16:07, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes. The Venera probes. Citation provided. --Equinox 199.27.128.117 17:18, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
(Well, you got me an edit conflict, after checking, editing and reviewing,but here's what I wrote.)
That's not the way I would phrase that claim, but it sounds like it's Venera 9 and its similar successors being talked about, with the "pre-cooling".
A brief check of a book I have (no, I've never heard of The Internet) suggests that the complete list of landers that actually got to Venus are as follows:
Venera 3 (descent probe, probably crashed, communications failed before approach)
Venera 4 (descent probe, ran out of power before destroyed in the atmosphere)
Venera 5 (descent probe, may have crushed at late stage of descent while still powered)
Venera 6 (descent probe, as V5)
Venera 7 (23 minutes of faint recordings from surface, probably landed on side after rough landing)
Venera 8 (50 minutes on surface before going silent)
Venera 9 (53 minutes, before radio contact with orbiter lost and not regained)
Venera 10 (can't find timing details)
Venera 11 (95 minutes, before contact with orbiter lost)
Venera 12 (110 minutes)
Venera 13 (a confirmed 127 minutes)
Venera 14 (57 minutes, ditto; managed to "measure its own lens-cap" in the intended soil-compressibility experiment!)
Vega 1 (no time information for Venus Lander component
Vega 2 (56 minutes for on surface for Venus Lander component)
Pioneer (an hour, for one of three landers on the mission)
Knowing the surface environment (temperature and pressure) and the design specs it can be assumed that Venera 13's confirmed 127 minutes of operation is near the top-end of functionality and that those that merely went out of range would have had not much more survival time. Although by the time of the final Veneras the expected survival time was only 30 minutes, and yet they may have lasted at least twice as long, so who knows... (Also note the possible usage of "a couple of hours" in relation to 1070.)

141.101.98.247 17:48, 5 December 2014 (UTC)